(For the unofficial English translation of the most recent official information, only available in Japanese, on surgical and pathological details of some of the thyroid cancer cases, see this post).

Among other information, the Oversight Committee released the latest results (as of September 30, 2015) of the ongoing Full-Scale thyroid examination, or the second round screening, which is being conducted over a two-year period from April 2014 to March 2016. Although the "final" results of Initial Screening, or the first round screening, were released at the last Oversight Committee meeting held on August 30, 2015, the secondary examination and surgical confirmation are still ongoing, and a few new additional results were orally presented. (Initial Screening is now officially called "Preliminary Baseline Screening,&q…

Below is the press conference presentation (in Japanese with English interpretation) given by Professor Toshihide Tsuda of Okayama University at the Foreign Correspondence Club of Japan (FCCJ) on October 8, 2015 (Japan time).

On October 6, 2015, an epidemiological analysis of Fukushima thyroid cancer data by Professor Tsuda's research group was published online ahead of print in Epidemiology, official journal of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. The main author of the study, Professor Tsuda is an environmental epidemiologist who has devoted himself to clarifying the cause of health effects in numerous environmental cases such as Minamata disease, Nishi-Yodogawa air pollution in Osaka, and recognition of lung cancer in pneumoconiosis patients as an occupational disease.

On the September 21, 2015 issue of the New York Times, a science writer George Johnson published an article, "When Radiation Isn’t the Real Risk," which starts with the following phrase: "This spring, four years after the nuclear accident at Fukushima, a small group of scientists met in Tokyo to evaluate the deadly aftermath."

No details are given by George Johnson as to who these scientists are except for Mohan Doss, a medical physicist. It is not clear if this was intentional. Below is some background information on this meeting and the rest of its participants, followed by some interesting facts relating to the potential political ties and the stance (or the lack of stance) of radiation hormesis model in radiation protection. (Note: This post focused on presenting facts on selective aspects of Johnson's ill-written article).

＊＊＊＊＊ SAMRAI 2014 and SARIThe meeting by “a small group of scientists” referred to by Johnson's RAW DATA article in the September…